


"Rise, O Moon..."

by GreenyLove



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Anxiety Disorder, Canon-Typical Violence, Chronic Illness, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:06:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9558713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenyLove/pseuds/GreenyLove
Summary: ...and tell me of that man, so weary with need, who wandered far and wide to sow the graveyard of the gods."The Inquisition gets far more than it bargains for, in the enormous task of saving Thedas from ruin. Of course, it would help if they bargained with the right gods.





	

> _With passion'd breath does the darkness creep. It is the whisper in the night, the lie upon your sleep. - Transfigurations 1:5_

Jeyya rips the scarf from her head, gritting her teeth as brass pins snag against the thick, blue-black wefts of her hair. A few clatter to the floor with tiny plinks, like raindrops on the metal of a halla’s harness.

Four quick shakes of her head and the weight of her hair settles familiarly against the back of her arms, tickling her elbows. Without thinking, she wraps the scarf around her hands and finds comfort in the pressure of its softness…until her roving fingers find patches of crusty dough, smears of egg yolk and hearth cinders. Its subtle color and patterning—a grey weave with dark blue wolves running across its fringe—have been _ruined_ by the farina-and-cornmeal chaos of the kitchens.

It is like losing a friend, or a signpost that once pointed home.

(Keeley won’t miss the scarf; it was a gift, on the grey dawn of Jeyya’s departure, from the clan’s First to the clan’s misfit. _Use it to cover your hair, sister. Shemlens look without seeing. They’ll recall the scarf, but not the face beneath it…)_

Fury brings blood to her cheeks and neck and for a second Jeyya swear she will finally scream. Her circumstances are nothing but miserable: a country apart from her kinsmen, hiding in a sea of strangers, a spy sent to bring news back to Deshanna’s ear.

It still eludes her what, exactly, a hunter like _her_ is supposed to _do_ at this so-called Conclave. A political gathering of mages, templars, and priests; her reconnaissance suggests it to be the last-ditch efforts of the sensible shems to reach an agreeable truce between mage and templar. She has observed the delegates for less than ten days and already Jeyya can see the futility of _that_ endeavor. Both sides, staff and shield, harbor much contempt for the other, circling disasters and squalling accusations too loudly to hear the quiet voice of peace.

_Who killed the hare, the wolf or the bear? One shall howl and one shall growl, but which has set the snare?_

A Dalish riddle, stuck in her mind like a persistent itch. No one has played word games with her in years, but she can still recall the sharp gaze of the hearthmistress when child-Jeyya had asked, “Does it matter, if you’re the hare?”

That is the true tragedy, Jeyya realizes now, all this bluster over who-what-why and _no one_ is thinking of the seasons beyond the conflict. So many meetings and debates, to hash out grievances suffered, by whom and for how long, with not enough talk of the future. The journey from Wycome afforded Jeyya much time to learn the Bannorn and see the havoc reeked upon the countryside. Ruined fields _are still ruined,_ whether by magefire or trampled beneath an armored boot.

It seems to her, there should be much less huffing about Kirkwall and this 'White Spire' and more concern showed for the harvests. Won’t Chantry and Circle both need grain and firewood, homes without holes in them, to survive the winter?

(Jeyya’s patience wears gossamer thin after only a few days of gathering what information she can while posed as a servant. If she was Divine—a snort, for what use would she have for a church with a roof?—she would allow each representative a single slap on the other, then all would shake hands, and break bread in peace. 

_Any person still wishing to argue about yesterday's nonsense can kindly fuck themselves._

It is not a politically elegant solution but—)

The hallways spirals past the lower kitchens, where ovens as tall as trees are stoked by soot-streaked elves under the eye of the head baker, who spares no glance to Jeyya as she slips past. Another stairwell, and the landing deposits her in the lowest reaches of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. She lets her bare feet carry her on a familiar circuit through the temple’s underbelly. The architecture reeks of secrets, a plethora of passages sloping further into the heart of the mountain now blocked by new brick, painted cleverly to match the natural stone. Whatever purpose these caves once served is lost, with polite signs directing lost pilgrims to the upper levels of this holy house of worship.

As she walks, she puzzles, her eyes fixed on the ground before her. Doubt is a small monster in her stomach, scratching its way up into her chest. Surely she is missing something critical about this gathering! These shemlens and their simpering tragedies….Keeley called it a war, but Jeyya didn’t understand! Shems always fought. There was always a war, the boundaries of shemlen nations fluid as silt on the bottom of a quick-flowing river.

But never had Keeper communed with the spirits so many nights in a row.

Never had Keeley looked so washed out by the rich fabric of her First robes.

And never had Jeyya felt quite so choked by her _uselessness._

(Her sister learns to guide the clan, but Jeyya gleans other things from long hours perched in the forest, watching a leaf tremble on a shattered twig, until a raven startles into flight in the branches above and Jeyya swears and grinds her fists into her temples.

She returns to the aravels with a scowl and a headache, kicking over baskets and snapping incoherently about _dead gods who won’t finish their sentences_ until someone grabs her forearm and says, “Many pardons, dalen, but you’re scaring the halla….”

Keeley is a mage. Jeyya isn’t.

That is the simplest explanation. Other details of the twins birth and early life exist, but they are rarely discussed. Keeley is a hale and beautiful babe, graced with rich magical talents, a natural pick to succeed Deshanna and guide Lavellan through the many nights. It’s oft mentioned that Keeley did not cry upon her birth, but sang, and the spirits rejoiced in her song. 

Her sister Jeyya, younger by two hours, did not cry either. In fact, she made no noise at all for several minutes, long enough to send the midwife calling for the Keeper, unease creeping into the corners of the aravel. The babe was by all appearances equally hale, but her eyes were oddly blank. 

Deshanna arrives. It is a quick assessment, two fingers pressed against the chest of each babe.

Keeley has magic. Jeyya has room for magic, but none there. A carved out hole inside her where something should exist but nothing does.

The midwife declares it a defect. Keeper Deshanna says little. The babes grow up, and Jeyya laughs and roughhouses and bleeds and loses her milk teeth, normal except for the part of her that isn’t.

And Jeyya makes her clan nervous, the erratic shadow cast from Keeley’s steady flame. 

When her coming-of-age occurs, Jeyya chooses Dirthamen, shepherd of secrets, knowledge-bringer, hoping to conquer the tumbling terror of her own thoughts, but while the swell does settle, the fronded floor drops off and now there’s a bottomless trench where a sandbar used to be – 

– And Jeyya can do little but walk the woods and listen until history’s discord makes her want to scream – 

So Keeley convinces Keeper Deshanna to send her little sister away, to spy, perhaps because only Jeyya stands a chance at making sense of the senseless, but most likely because she will make a better martyr than hunter.) 

“The nerve of that prickled, pruned shem!” Jeyya says, spitting her contempt at the base of a faded mural. She is back near the stairs, one landing down from the bakery. Likely they will have noted her absence. She ought to report back—the quartermaster gives her orders today, dipping into the kitchen staff for a reason she ignored. It didn’t matter. It is easier work than the kitchen, plus delivering papers and fresh pots of ink gives her better reign of the Conclave, a convenient way to glean bits of diplomacy and gossip—

Though she knows she will not suffer quietly through another off-hand remark from the snobbish Chancellor, wrinkling his nose at the knife-ear who dared to meet his eye while delivering _yet another_ set of new quills. She thinks his name is Roderick and tells herself that next time, she will shove the quill nubs under his fingernails, grind then into the bone, until he has ten feathers on ten fingers and shrieks like the _mud-pecking fowl_ that he is.

A good plan.

…If she wants to dishonor the clan. Getting caught, arrested, tried—would they bring her to a hanging tree?

“I’m missing something,” she sighs, lifting the scarf to her nose and inhaling. It barely smells like Keeley, not anymore, but instead reeks with the sour stench of shem cooking. Unease only thickens beneath her skin. _Missing something, missing something…._

Murmuring voices give Jeyya pause.

Other servants frequent these passages, which service various cold storages and dry stock, fashioned out of repurposed alcoves and oddly shaped rooms. Most of that is back above, closer to the kitchen and quarters where the staff sleeps when their holy site is not co-opted for a political summit. These dusty depths, the last bits reclaimed from the belly of the mountain, contain little of interest. Perfect for a Dalish spy, but who else?

She knows the layout, the room and their exits. There is one space, a larger room down this hallway, where she spied sketches and plans haphazardly tacked to the shuttered doors, impending reconstructions that have been postponed in lieu of the Conclave.

Shoving the scarf into her belt, she moves away from the stairs and back into the belly of the mountain.

A flicker of light is all the warning she gets before two armored sentries round the far corner, their torch cutting orange swathes through the shadows. Jeyya slides into the deeper dark behind a rough-hewn support beam, letting her hair fall like a veil between her and the strangers. Their armor and fastening surprise her—well made but worn by battle, fashioned in silver and indigo blue. One has the crest of the rearing griffon stamped into their breastplate.

_Grey Wardens?_

They reach the door and one lifts the torch into an empty sconce.

_Why do they move with such wrongness?_

It is hard to describe—a sluggish drag to their footsteps, stiffness in their limbs. Like sea creatures learning their legs. Surely, they are not drunk, but….

When the door opens, the wrongness seeps into the air with a tinny whine. Elven ears prick forward; a muffled noise, like calling out against a gag.

One warden enters, and then the other.

(Astonishing, how life can change from one heartbeat to the next. For years she feels beaten by the turmoil of her own mind, at the whims of the swell and drag of her crashing thoughts. But then, a moment—)

Jeyya moves out into the hallway, glancing in either direction. Would more wardens arrive? Should she go for help and risk exposure? Is it better to retreat and deny all knowledge of strange meetings in a dilapidated room? What of her mission?

Beyond the door, someone speaks. The words are impossible to distinguish, but are spoken with surety, with charismatic cadence. Pressure builds in the air, bright light flash beneath the door, and she half expects the pop and crackle of storm static.

And then there is an anguished cry, half lost in the gloom. “Help me!”

(It is the first time in a long while that she acts without hesitation.)

Jeyya throws herself at the doors, heaving them open. She rolls into a tumble, coming up in a half-crouch. The sight before her is so unholy and so _fucking unexpected_ that she sags beneath the shock.

_“What’s going on here?”_

(She will remember nothing of the pain that follows. It will begin as many things do: a suffusion of light and an outstretched hand.)

**Author's Note:**

> THIS AIN'T YER MOTHER'S DRAGON AGE
> 
> so I've been dancing around this massive fix-it idea since Trespasser first released. It spawned when I realized that Corypheus is wasted as a villain and maybe we should revisit that whole titan thing, so...here we go. A godly clusterfuck. 
> 
> I will add tags and appropriate warnings as they apply. Avoiding a lot of it currently for spoiler reasons. 
> 
> Part of the next installment is already written so hopefully more soon?


End file.
